


dead tired

by sapphicsongbird



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Jon is sad, M/M, Safehouse Fluff, Safehouse angst, The apocalypse blows, everything is sad, martin is sad, so much cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24982237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicsongbird/pseuds/sapphicsongbird
Summary: are they Martin's nightmares? or Jon's?
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 2
Kudos: 67





	dead tired

He hated the nightmares. 

More even than Martin did, because after he woke, trembling, sheened in cold sweat and his mouth pressed, terrified, into the curve between Jon’s narrow shoulder and his neck, Martin could never remember them. But the sight of Martin writhing between the sheets, face clenched in something so far past terror that it was almost unrecognizable, the curl of his lips and the furrowing of his brow… Jon could never forget that. 

He tried to wake him. Tonight, it was worse. Well, night didn’t mean much. He’d spent some time wondering why they still needed sleep at all when food and water and other basic bodily needs had seemed to become suddenly irrelevant, until he remembered dreams with a sick feeling. 

Martin was moaning. His voice lower than normal, distressed, catching in his throat. Jon lay awake, trying not to catch snippets of words: “don’t… Sasha… where… alone.” 

He rolled over to face Martin. The other man was crying in his sleep, face wet and red. Carefully, afraid of what might happen if he was too forceful, Jon swiped the wetness from his cheek. 

“Martin? Martin… I’m right here.” 

“Don’t. Stop! No.” 

“Martin? Martin?” Wake up, wake up, wake up, God, he thought. His chest tightened: Martin’s body was hot against him, the sheets growing damp. Jon touched his arm. 

Nothing happened. 

He shook a little, though he was so much smaller than Martin that he felt ridiculous trying. 

Nothing happened. 

“Jon, don’t! Jon, please… please…”

All at once nausea swept over him. He swallowed sour bile, trying not to be sick, because suddenly his dam broke, and he saw what Martin saw. Jon compelling him. Jon Knowing him. Jon feeding on his fear, consuming him, his trauma: stories recounting, word for word, his mother’s cruelties, or the shameful terror he felt the first time Tim accused him of harbouring inappropriate inklings for the boss, or how he suspected, even from the first day, that Elias knew about the lie on his CV, how he was trapped, how he couldn’t ever leave. Even before he knew, for certain, how very true that was. 

Little fears. All-consuming, everyday fears: Jon relished them all and laughed in joy and terror at Martin’s squirming, forced compliance. 

He couldn’t bring himself to sit up, to try and rouse Martin again. A vice of guilt tightened around his throat, his gut; he squeezed every one of his eyes shut and still, he saw and couldn’t stop seeing Martin’s sickening nightmare. 

He didn’t know how long he lay there, wishing for the dark. It played on loop in his head, like a spooling, relentless tape: “Jon, please, no, you’re hurting me, Jon, stop, please…” The refrain scorched itself into his brain, on his tongue, across his whole body, Martin begging for relief. 

So dizzied by the wash of sight, he didn’t quite notice when it paused. Even when it did, he still saw, still heard it, unable to forget or wash the memory from his mind. He only roused to a hot, sweaty hand on his stomach, gently. 

“Jon? Jon? Are you sleeping?” 

He started. “What?”

“S-sorry? I… I thought…” 

“No. Shh.”

“Are you okay?” Martin’s eyes clouded with concern at Jon’s drawn features, the red of his bloodshot eyes, the tight pressing of his lips together. 

Jon shook his head, swallowing, hard. “Don’t touch me.”

“Jon!”

“Just--don’t! Martin.” 

Martin shied away, hurt, his wide eyes questioning. It hurt Jon to look at him, this soft and stubborn man who loved him and trusted him and, he knew, would die for him without even a thought. 

There was a long silence as Martin hoisted himself from the bed. He moved as though about to make tea, until he remembered that they couldn’t make tea, so he sat, across the room, and though Jon turned towards the blank, wooden wall, he could feel Martin’s eyes on his back, searching. 

When he spoke, his voice was shaky and cracking. “It isn’t your fault, you know.” 

“Shut up.” 

Martin said nothing. 

For a long time, neither of them did. 

What time there was lay heavy on them. Eventually, Jon realized, his legs had fallen asleep; he stirred. “You can just talk to me?” Martin said, questioningly, probingly, quietly. 

Jon looked at him: his deep brown eyes and the welcoming curve of his mouth, even now trying to smile, flustered him still, and he let out a sound that could have been a cry trying and failing to disguise itself as a laugh. “I’ll destroy you,” he said simply. It was almost a whisper, scraping across the space between them like a knife. “If you don’t leave--”

“I’m not. Leaving.” Martin’s voice was firm in his endearing way, and Jon softened all at once. 

“Martin.” 

“I love you?”

“You have bad dreams.” It wasn’t a question. Jon sat up. 

Martin shrugged. Hesitantly he moved towards the bed again, and when Jon didn’t resist, he sat beside him. Their thighs pressed warmly together, though their eyes didn’t meet. “I don’t really remember them.”

Jon laughed drily. “I do.” He tried to look at Martin, but every time he did, an ache welled in him, crawling from his stomach to the back of his throat and threatening to spill out. “They’re… horrible.”

“Jon? Jon. Look at me.” Martin took his face, gently, between his two soft hands and turned Jon’s gaze towards him. Jon looked down into his lap as Martin whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and at that, Jon shoved him away. 

“Don’t you understand?” He spat the words, venomously. “They’re all about me, they’re… I didn’t want to become a monster, I tried so hard to-to-to avoid this, and, and it didn’t matter, and Elias won, and here I am, and you, you’re… frightened of me.”

To his dismay, Martin didn’t, immediately, contradict him. You can’t trust comfort, he thought cynically, a false smirk playing across his lips. 

When Jon finally looked up, Martin’s eyes were moist. “You’re not a monster-you’re not, you’re, you’re Jon.” Before Jon could disagree, he continued, “You’re my Jon, and, and I want to love you, I do love you, and I don’t care, I don’t care what world that’s in, I don’t, hey! Look. Look at me. Jon.” 

Jon let out a light and rattling breath, long and slow. The heat of it met the damp skin of Martin’s cheeks, their faces had pulled so closely together. 

“What do you see?”

Jon almost laughed, for real, this time. “I see… you, Martin.” 

“Yes! That’s… exactly. Yes.” 

Jon planted a light kiss on Martin’s cheek, and the one he loved smiled, almost convinced that in this moment at least, all was well again. Then Jon, silently, began to cry. Tears streaming down his face in quiet rivers, his breath still undisturbed and even, he whispered, “would you just… just hold me, Martin.” His voice, defeated and dead tired, barely cut through the thick and oppressive air. “Please.”

Martin didn’t need to say anything. As they lay down together, he wrapped Jon’s thin frame into him, smelling the warm, husky scent of his hair, feeling the taut, hot skin of his stomach, whispering, “shh, shh, shh,” as Jon shook in his arms. They lay that way for a long time, until Jon stopped crying and his body stilled and he turned to face Martin and buried his scarred face in Martin’s chest, in the rough wool of the sweater he wore. Martin locked his finger’s in Jon’s long, graying hair, pulling him closer, closer, closer. 

His eyes drifted closed. He remembered Jon reaching out to him in the Lonely, the first familiar thing in what felt like eons. Jon sipping tea he knew, deep down, he didn’t want. Jon scoffing over misfiled statements, over Martin’s earnest eagerness, Jon wondering, absurdly, if he was a ghost. Jon keeping his secret. Jon waking up, malnourished and yet unphased, after six silent months, oblivious to all the bedside nothings Martin had whispered, hoping, praying they’d make some difference. 

Jon here. Jon now, exhausted and frightened and guilty and not alone, curled against him. 

He thought of Jon until he, once more, fell asleep.


End file.
